Magnetic disc drives have read/write heads which are used for both writing data to a magnetic disc and reading data from the magnetic disc. During a write operation, a write signal is provided to a selected read/write head from a write control circuit. The write signal represents data to be encoded onto the magnetic disc. More particularly, the read/write head receives encoded digital data from a "channel" chip. The transitions of the signal received from the channel chip cause the write current flowing within the read/write head to reverse direction which, in turn, induces a flux reversal in the magnetized material of the medium.
During a read operation, the read/write head senses flux reversals from the magnetic disc. The flux reversals are encoded onto the magnetic disc during the write operation. Based on the flux reversals, the read/write head provides a read signal to a read channel. The read circuit amplifies the read signal, and the channel circuit recovers the data. The read circuit then provides the data to a magnetic disc controller for further processing.
Each magnetic disc in a disk drive has a corresponding "head" adjacent to the top and bottom surfaces of the disc. Thus, there are two N heads per stack where N equals the number of disks in a drive. Normally, only one head is active at any given time. Thus, for each head, there may be a plurality of connectors for either providing a read or write function. For example, one head may require four connections, namely a ground wire, a read wire, and a pair of write wires.
Normally, the ground wire is connected through a pin out. However, this arrangement increases the size of the pin out arrangement. This reduces the ability of the package to mount on the actuator area.